# Internationalization (i18n)

> Building a product so it can be localized — text, dates, URLs and layouts — rather than retrofitting languages into an English-only shell.

The '18n' numeronym says how common the term got; the work is making the product language-shaped: strings in dictionaries not code, locale-aware dates and numbers, layouts that survive German words twice as long as English ones, and URLs that respect the user's language.

Localization (l10n) is the follow-on act — filling each dictionary, translating URLs into what a Hungarian searches (kapcsolat, not contact), writing metadata per locale, and linking the versions with hreflang. i18n is architecture; l10n is the content work it makes possible.

## Related terms

- https://dfieldsolutions.com/en/glossary/hreflang.md
- https://dfieldsolutions.com/en/glossary/canonical-url.md
- https://dfieldsolutions.com/en/glossary/seo.md

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Source: https://dfieldsolutions.com/en/glossary/internationalization
DField Solutions — Dunakeszi, Hungary — dezso@dfieldsolutions.com
Booking: see https://dfieldsolutions.com/en/contact